27th of November 2015

Joe’s Before & After With Criquet Shirts

We have talked over and over again on the podcast, and in the Mate book, about the importance of signaling. How everything you say and do signals to the women around you something about your fitness and effectiveness as a potential mate.

Clothing and personal style are high up on the list of obvious (to women) signals that men send, often without any understanding of what those signals are. Joe, from the Helping Joe series, is a textbook example of this phenomenon.

Over 40 episodes, we’ve addressed his fashion sense and style choices numerous times. He was buying and wearing clothes IN PUBLIC that he thought were “cool” which were, in fact, scaring away women who a) valued personal style, b) were interested in more understated looks, and c) had eyes.

Joe was not only cockblocking himself at speed dating events and on first dates, but he was sending all the wrong signals to women about who he was. So, on the off-chance that a woman who still had her sight somehow found it in her heart to swipe right on Joe, chances are she was not the kind of woman Joe was really interested in.

We tried to hammer this into Joe’s thick ginger skull, and he kind of got it on a theoretical, intellectual level, but intuitively and practically it still wasn’t clicking. His internal compass was still pointed to “cool” and sleeveless shirts with epaulettes and buttons shaped like Teddy Grahams.

Don’t believe me? Here’s proof. Consider this your trigger warning:

When our most recent sponsor, Criquet Shirts, heard about Joe and saw some of these pictures, they were heartbroken, like when you see an abandoned dog with mange, but they also saw an opportunity to help. Unlike Joe’s centaur t-shirts, Criquet’s shirts are simple, high-quality, classic designs that are perfect for guys who struggle with fashion and personal style.

That’s when they did the most charitable thing in the history of this show: they hooked Joe up with some of their shirts! The only catch was that he had to let the team at Criquet pick out the shirts and photograph him in their clothes.

Of course, Joe’s first instinct was to resist. He had all these excuses for why this wasn’t a good idea, none of which I will bore you with so you don’t develop the urge to stab him too. After we got done yelling at him in real life and online IN ALL CAPS, he agreed and this is the result:

Surprise, surprise, they are already the best shirts he has ever owned and these are the best pictures of him he’s ever had.

I mean, LOOK AT THESE FUCKING PICTURES! He looks like a human being with real value and prospects!

Obviously, if you’ve been listening to the podcast for long enough, you know that the value I’m talking about was always there. All of us who work with him have known it for as long as we’ve known him–if he wasn’t a good guy with a lot of stuff going for him, we would have thrown him off my balcony a year ago.

But here’s the thing: women didn’t know that. How could they? He’s been hiding it under awful, shitty clothes. He’s been covering it up for so long in fact that he forgot he had it. The shittiness had leeched into his body like chemicals from cheap plastic bottles into water.

It wasn’t long–maybe a week–before wearing the new shirts started to change his attitude a little and, more importantly, started to change how women saw him. He was getting more compliments from women at improv, on Tinder first dates, even my wife Veronica noticed him–and not in the mangey abandoned dog way that she used to.

The point is, if you struggle with fashion and personal style, don’t just take pointers from anyone, don’t just buy cheap shitty shirts that fall apart every year because you don’t care. Invest a little bit of money–NOT A LOT–and stick with simple, classic, high quality looks that signal to women that a) you understand the importance of looking good and b) you are not a soulless ginger shut-in surrounded by a mountain of lists that will one day double as the funeral pyre for your dating life.

You can find those kinds of looks anywhere, but for shirts our sponsor Criquet has made it easy for you. With the versatility of their classic design, you can dress them up for work or you can dress them down when you’re hanging out at home or with friends. You can wear them to the bar or to a Tinder date and not have to worry about looking like a toolbox. Either way, you will always be comfortable.

Go to their website criquetshirts.com for more options and use the promo code MATE for 20% off.